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Coin World, October 7, 2016
"The day after Hallowe’en is All Saints’ Day, followed by All Souls’ Day. In Europe on these days people go to the graves of their beloved ones who have passed away. Hallowe’en, the eve of the holy days (that’s what the word means), is a festival of the ancient Celtic world particularly... In the Celtic world—the world with which Hallowe’en is associated—it is the dead who come to visit the homes. Hallowe’en is the night of the re-entry of the dead into their domiciles, visiting again the people with whom they had dwelled." (Joseph Campbell on the Roots of Halloween - The Daily Beast)Looking further back, scholars believe the historical origin of Halloween lies in the Celtic festival of Samhain. Larousse World Mythology refers to October 31 as "Samhain's feast." In his monumental work The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer refers to Samhain as "an ancient pagan festival of the dead":
"Halloween seems to have been the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter... when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them by their affectionate kinsfolk." (The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion, Sir James George Frazer)Frazer states that on Samhain, the Celts used "manifold methods of divination... for the purpose of ascertaining their destiny in the coming year." He also suggests that it may have been the Celtic new year. Nora Chadwick's excellent book The Celts also describes Samhain as "the beginning of the Celtic year, when any barriers between man and the supernatural were lowered."
"It is not only the souls of the departed who are supposed to be hovering unseen... Witches then speed on their errands of mischief... the fairies, too, are all let loose, and hobgoblins of every sort roam freely about."Chadwick puts this into perspective by pointing out "the naturalness with which men, women and the gods to pass in and out of the natural and supernatural spheres (in Celtic mythology). In many circumstances, there does not seem to have been any barrier."
Cernunnos, the horned god |
"(The feast of) Samhain, with its emphasis on the supernatural, was decidedly pagan. While missionaries identified their holy days with those observed by the Celts, they branded the earlier religion's supernatural deities as evil, and associated them with the devil. As representatives of the rival religion, Druids were considered evil worshippers of devilish or demonic gods and spirits. The Celtic underworld inevitably became identified with the Christian Hell." (Halloween: The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows by Jack Santino, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress)
Here, perhaps, we have come to the heart of the matter: an ancient pagan festival of the dead returning from the underworld, later characterized by Christians as a night when evil beings from Hell are let loose. It's only one step from this explanation to that of "the Devil's holiday."